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Do IT this week: Layering
Is desert climate to blame for lackluster ERAs? Or is there another reason?
By Sheldon Ocker
Beacon Journal sports writer
Published on Saturday, Apr 04, 2009
HOUSTON: It sounds like an excuse. Maybe it is. Then again, there are data to support the proposition that the climate in Arizona makes it tougher on pitchers.
Baseball people have been spreading the word for decades: Pitchers can't grip the ball properly in Arizona because of the light, dry air, which also adversely affects the sharpness of their breaking pitches. Moreover, balls hit in the air carry farther.
For the first time since 1992, the Indians made Arizona their spring training home this year. Through 16 years in Florida, not a word was said about the wind or the humidity. It was taken for granted that those climatological factors were little different from conditions in New York, Chicago, Oakland, Kansas City or Cleveland.
But Phoenix is different. Suddenly, pitchers' earned-run averages were soaring and so
were the drives hit well beyond the outfield fences. Was there an element of science at work, or were the pitchers merely performing badly?
It's impossible to know for certain, at least until the regular season begins and Tribe pitchers are working in temperate climates. But there are numbers to indicate the truth of the theory that Arizona is a pitcher's worst enemy.
For all exhibition games through Wednesday, the collective ERAs of pitchers training in Florida was 4.43. The aggregate ERA for pitchers in Arizona was 5.75. Moreover, of the top 19 individual ERAs, 16 were achieved by pitchers in Florida.
''What pitchers do is a little more real in regard to what you see in Florida, there's no doubt about that,'' Indians manager Eric Wedge said Friday. ''It creates more uncertainty [in evaluating pitchers], especially because it's the first time for us in Arizona.''
It was the first time Wedge had seen this phenomenon in person, but he had heard plenty.
''Everybody talked to us about it ahead of time,'' he said.
Few Tribe pitchers had dealt with spring training in Arizona before this year. Kerry Wood was an exception, having spent his career with the Chicago Cubs, who hold camp in Mesa.
Wood had little trouble coping with the climatic conditions, compiling a 0.00 ERA. But he only pitched one inning at a time, for a total of six.
And even Wood recognizes the handicap of pitching in Arizona.
Asked whether maintaining a proper grip on the ball was real, he said: ''Absolutely. We all deal with it the whole time we're there. It comes with the territory.''
The light air also seems to flatten out breaking pitches, which can create all sorts of awful fantasies for pitchers who haven't experienced Arizona.
''Just about every spring, I leave there thinking that my slider is terrible,'' Wood said. ''After a week of the season, it's back to normal.''
So is Cliff Lee's 12.46 ERA a consequence of the climate in Goodyear and Peoria and Surprise and Scottsdale? Did these factors finally catch up with Scott Lewis in his last two appearances, blowing up his ERA to 8.59?
And what about the relievers who have struggled? Masa Kobayashi has a 12.27 ERA, and Rafael Betancourt's is 7.04.
Then again, Fausto Carmona's pitches traveled through the same air as Lee's and Lewis', yet going into his start Friday night against the Houston Astros, his ERA was a nifty 2.45.
''We're all working in the same elements,'' Lee said. ''I heard guys talk about this before we got here. Sometimes you start thinking about that stuff instead of how to get the batter out.''
After two or three of his starts, Lee seemed totally baffled by the bad results.
''For the most part, I threw the ball where I wanted to and they still hit it,'' he said. ''I felt real good out there, so I don't know. I think you have a different frame of mind when you're working on things instead of just trying to get guys out.''
The ''working on things'' reasoning also has some basis in fact, though few pitchers are willing to make themselves look bad by totally ignoring the objective of retiring batters.
Can't anything be done to alleviate the effects of the dry air when a pitcher grips a ball?
''It can be hard to get a sweat going in one inning,'' Wood said. ''But you have rosin and you try to have sweat. You put them together and see if you can get your hands sticky.''
The surefire cure comes in early April, when pitchers leave Arizona in the rearview mirror.
Sheldon Ocker can be reached at socker@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Indians blog at http://www.ohio.com/tribematters. Follow the Indians on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ABJ_Indians
HOUSTON: It sounds like an excuse. Maybe it is. Then again, there are data to support the proposition that the climate in Arizona makes it tougher on pitchers.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Naples, FL
Posted 08:20 AM, 04/04/2009
It does seem that Wood and Carmona, guys who can get by with the fastball had better success than guys like Lee and Lewis who need the breaking ball to be working well. Just hope the adjustment comes quickly.
Alliance, Oh
Posted 08:40 AM, 04/04/2009
After this season, the big shots on the organization will be saying how great it was to win 75 games because they signed a few sore armed pitchers that fell apart during the season. Last year, they wanted a ticker tape parade because they ended up .500 with the best starting staff in baseball!
Can't wait to see Delucci and Kobayashi perform (not) this year.
cuyahoga falls, oh
Posted 09:03 AM, 04/04/2009
having great respect and admiration for the job and thinking accomplished by the Tribe front office, it was perplexing why a team with pitching as their most prominent strength chose to go where pitchers have always struggled to deal with climate, and where their fan base is least present, as opposed to Florida...
we don't play out there, so why use it to muddle the coach's assesment ability and give misleading stats?
unintelligent at best.
Bethesda, MD
Posted 09:22 AM, 04/04/2009
rotation, rotation, rotation
